LMS Email

OMS Principal,

I have been investigating Learning Management Systems and started to compare our current system, PowerSchool Learning Haiku, to Canvas. While I was comparing them I kept running into helpful tools that we at Oxford are missing out on. One thing that I noticed is that Canvas has more specific notifications for parents to alert them if their student is not only missing an assignment but also if a student scored less than their chosen percentage or more than their chosen percentage. This ability would help parents keep up with their students’ successes and struggles customized to their specific student. Canvas also has analytics on where a students’ score is compared to their classmates for the teacher, student, and parent. This can help parents, students, and teachers see what the student is succeeding at and struggling with as well. One more major positive about Canvas is the integrated collaboration. There are integrated message boards where students can post their discussion similarly to padlet but through the Canvas App as well as students can synchronously video chat through Canvas’s website instead of loading zoom links. Lastly, Canvas has excellent easy to understand guides for parents, students, teachers, and administration. These guides often have screenshots of what the screen will look like and there are many discussion boards with questions parents or students may have. The more parents, students, and teachers understand the capability of the LMS and understand how to access the information they need efficiently the more parents and students buy in and the more interactive teachers can be.

I would use Canvas to not only deliver more interactive lessons through learning modules with multiple forms of interaction but also to communicate with students and parents to build a sense of community. Using the modules, video conferencing, having group collaborations, and the chat feature students will be more connected again. The more students can connect with each other and their teachers the more invested they are, more higher level thinking happens, and social and emotional needs are being met. 

This LMS has its own grading system and can be linked to PowerSchool to import the student information. This LMS does not have features for administration to leave comments about health  problems or other information about a student or an IEP program so keeping PowerSchool would be ideal to import into Canvas. Thank you for reading about the new Learning Management System I have been exploring. Feel free to reach out with any questions and to check out the Canvas guides.

Maegan DeLeary

#EDU643#Week2